Fascinating Chemistry - A Charlotte Mason Friendly Online Resource {a Crew Review}

 

Fascinating Education is an online science curriculum that is taught by Dr. Margulies, a neurologist who understands how our brain works (how we learn). He teaches Biology, Chemistry and Physics. We were given a full year subscription in exchange for our review of Fascinating Chemistry. Though the course is targeted at high schoolers, Dr. Margulies has expressed that even 7 and 8 year olds have completed the course, so really it’s up to you and what you believe your child is capable of (one of the great things about homeschooling!). 

 

 

Because my son had an abundance of science work already when this review became available, I decided to take this course myself. I worked my way through the lessons a few times a week. Since it’s been... ahem… a few years since I last took a chemistry class, I was relieved to see that the beginning of the course started at… the beginning. Dr. Margulies starts each course with the assumption that the student knows nothing about the subject matter, which worked great for me!

I noticed right away that Dr. Margulies teaches like he’s standing in front of you, in story form if you will. It’s like an audio living book. Does that make sense? Being a Charlotte Mason-esque homeschool, this is perfect for us. I wish I could figure out a way to get the course to play on the television. That way we all could watch/learn together!

Here is an outline of the entire course.

Fascinating Chemistry is broken down into 18 lessons

 as follows:

Lesson 1: The Intramolecular Bond
Lesson 2: The Ionic Bond
Lesson 3: The Covalent Bond
Lesson 4: The Polar Covalent Bond
Lesson 5: The Metallic Bond, Part 1
Lesson 6: The Metallic Bond, Part 2
Lesson 7: Heat
Lesson 8: Air Pressure
Lesson 9: Properties of Water
Lesson 10: The Mole
Lesson 11: Gasses
Lesson 12: Solutions
Lesson 13: Chemical Reactions
Lesson 14: Orbitals
Lesson 15: Electrochemistry
Lesson 16: Polymers
Lesson 17: The Nucleus
Lesson 18: Final Problems

Each of the lessons is composed of a sequence of slides, narrated by Dr. Margulies.

The above is a screenshot of the first few lessons. As you can see, each lesson is available to watch online or you can print the script and read it. Although, if you print it you're missing the slides which I think are imperative to the learning process. There is also a test at the end of each lesson. The tests can be done online or printed with the key instead.

 

Dr. Margulies does a wonderful job of interweaving history with the science of chemistry. He also relates the complicated-ness of chemistry to everyday life, making it MUCH easier to understand and retain.

 

Currently, there are labs (12 total) available for 7 of the 17 lessons. They are working to get more labs up. The majority of the labs use everyday items that you would probably already have on hand at home and range from making salt crystals to making brass!!  

 

Each of the labs comes in PDF form and follows an outline:

Safety

Purpose

Science Behind the Lab

What You'll Need

Directions 

 

Each individual course is available for $79, which gives you a full year of access.

Or, you can pick two courses for $125 and have access for a full year to both.

OR get all three courses for $175 and have TWO full years of access.

 

My bottom line

The Fascinating Education courses are very Charlotte Mason friendly- which I love. The labs are easy, well explained and fun. The fact that these courses can be done with multiple ages and grades make it large family friendly too. I totally recommend this to any family looking for a fun online science curriculum!

 

Thank you Fascinating Education!!